Member Spotlight – Nathan Danneman

We are incredibly proud of all of our LOOM Coworking members and love seeing all of their growth, personally and professionally. Learn more about NATHAN DANNEMAN who is the Chief Data Scientist at Data Machines Corp. (DMC). Find out how he combines his knowledge of computer science, modeling, statistics, analytics, and math skills to lead teams in writing algorithms and solving complex issues.

Intro – Bio, family, where are you from? I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. I spent time in Chapel Hill and Atlanta for school, and then in the DC area professionally. My wife, Monica is from Rock Hill. Our kids, Caleb and Piper, are 3 ½ and 1 ½, respectively.

Tell us about your Education?  My BA, from UNC, is in Public Policy Analysis with a focus on international policy. My PhD, from Emory, is in quantitative political science, where I studied international conflict processes (Why do wars start? How long will they last? What helps to shorten them?) via statistical and game-theoretic methods.

Sports? I throw a mean frisbee, and was a captain on the fencing team at UNC for the ’05-’06 season.

How did DMC start? DMC was founded in 2016 when our CEO left a previous, unscrupulous employer and started his own firm.

Describe DMC and who are your customers? I’m the Chief Data Scientist at Data Machines Corp. (DMC). We are a contracting/consulting firm that specializes in research and development for machine learning and artificial intelligence. We are a “full stack” operation, which means we help with everything from the hardware and data organization needed to make machine learning successful, through statistical model development, and on to model deployment and monitoring. In short, if you have data and questions, we can help write you software to continually arrive at the best answers possible.

We have two broad sets of customers. One set is involved with research-intensive operations using machine learning. These are Federal, University, and commercial entities that want to expand what is possible with machine learning to further their mission or business goals. The other set is striving to get their data, computational resources, and processes in place to harness machine learning to bolster their mission sets.

New customers you are targeting, new services being offered, etc? We are  building out a platform that allows customers to get geospatial or list-style “mashed up” data in a app format on their phone. For example, a beta customer gets a feed of property values overlaid with recent hail storm indicators so that they can do in-person sales of roofing and repairs efficiently.

What do you do on a daily basis and why? I drink lots of coffee, and lead teams that write algorithms that solve complex problems. The coffee is because I have two toddlers at home, and the algorithms are for fun.

What’s your past life? How did skills and background that got you here to where you are? Having a deep background in computational statistics helped set me up for a career in data science. I worked as a data scientist at a consultancy and a product firm before coming to DMC to lead the data science practice there.

What are your personal and professional goals? I’d like to continue to stay technical, while also continuing to grow in my leadership skills at DMC. It turns out that most of the difficult things in my line of work are interpersonal. Computers and math are easy – people are complicated!

Other than your work, what are you most passionate about? I like to play with my kids, read about ethics, make creative cocktails, and get outside.

Why did you initially come to LOOM?  I’ve been working from home since 2017; for me, LOOM is a way to get out of the house and meet other professionals in a work/social setting.

Where can we find out more about you on social media and online?

Website: nathandanneman.com

LinkedIn: Nathan Danneman

What is the best way to contact you?  Email is probably best; nathan.danneman@datamachines.io.